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Will a fan inside of a subwoofer/amplifier combo distort the sound?

post #1 of 7
11/11/12 at 7:50pm
Thread Starter 
I have a cheap little 2.1 setup for my PC. The subwoofer houses the amplifier on the inside of it with no external heatsink. It gets very hot in there and the MOSFETs are boiling hot.

As the title says, would putting a small fan at low RPM's inside of the enclosure mess with the sound or is there any better way to cool this off?

I tried searching for this and it looked like someone here tried adding a fan, but the heatsink was on the outside so he was able to cool it like that. He was also told not to cut into the enclosure which I don't plan on doing.

Thanks for the help!
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post #2 of 7
11/11/12 at 7:53pm

If you're talking about making a hole in the enclosure then you're essentially creating a port which will throw off the entire thing. If you're just looking to put a fan inside with no change to the enclosure, you're technically decreasing the volume of the box by a tiny bit but it wouldn't be noticeable.

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post #3 of 7
11/11/12 at 7:54pm
as far as i know, if you put a small fan in the existing hole, the sound would be something like talking through a desk fan, but since its a sub, it shouldent matter.
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post #4 of 7
11/11/12 at 7:55pm
Thread Starter 
I am talking about literally just placing a fan on the inside of the enclosure and letting it run quiet enough that I can't hear it - no cutting involved.

The sub fires down and is ported in the front, so I figured I would make the air blow out the front and cool it off.
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post #5 of 7
11/11/12 at 8:00pm
Just a fan inside the box won't specifically remove heat from it, it will spread it around inside the enclosure a bit though and you'd prolly lose a bit more through the port and to the internal surfaces.
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post #6 of 7
11/11/12 at 10:49pm
You should be fine. But unless its a really poor amp design i would think the heat would have been taken into account. If you want to really be effective at cooling the components look at the heat-sinks the manufacture installed and see if you can modify those or at least replace the cheap thermal paste.
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post #7 of 7
11/16/12 at 2:01pm
Thread Starter 
Sorry for the lack of response. Thanks for the help!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darren9 View Post

Just a fan inside the box won't specifically remove heat from it, it will spread it around inside the enclosure a bit though and you'd prolly lose a bit more through the port and to the internal surfaces.

Would you mind expanding on what you mean by "lose a bit more through the port and to the internal surfaces"? Are you talking about heat dissipating through there?

For the fan placement, I was thinking about aiming the fan so that it would exhaust air directly out of the port on the front.
Quote:
Originally Posted by darthspartan View Post

You should be fine. But unless its a really poor amp design i would think the heat would have been taken into account. If you want to really be effective at cooling the components look at the heat-sinks the manufacture installed and see if you can modify those or at least replace the cheap thermal paste.

Well, as it stands, there is no real "heat sink". As it stands, the current heat sink design is that there is a metal plate that screws into the back of the sub, probably 2-3mm thick, that has all of the amp components screwed to it with the three MOSFETs screwed into it. There is no traditional "fin" heat sink design or anything - literally just that metal plate. This is the back of the sub. That black plate you see on the right has all of the components screwed to it on the other side.

I was thinking of possibly getting a real heatsink to mount to it, maybe along with that fan, to cool it better.
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